'I saw devastation of Coventry bombings' recalls amazing woman turning 101 today

Special celebrations are being held today to mark the 101st birthday of a proud Coventry woman, born and bred in the city. Valerie Handley has seen a lot many locals have only ever heard or read about.

Through the darkest hours in the city's history, she was a teenager, seeing the Cathedral after it had been bombed and 'fire' everywhere as she walked to work. Valerie was one of five children born to Violet and Bruce MacPherson.

She went to Holbrooks Lane School until she was 14 before starting her working life at the accounts department of the former Owen Owen department store , now home to Primark, near to Broadgate and the city's Cathedral.

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During the war, at night, she worked in a 'communication centre', which relayed news about bombs to the emergency services. But she recalled a fateful day when, aged 17, she saw the devastation of the bombings first hand.

"On November 14 1940 I went to work as usual," she recalled. "That night there was an air raid. When we came out of the air raid shelter,which was over the road near Whitemoor School, our house was okay but some in the next road were destroyed. There were no buses so I walked to work.

"The city centre including the cathedral had been destroyed there were fire hoses everywhere but the firemen couldn’t save much. Owen Owen was gone too."

The family escaped to Brinklow for a few days before returning home and she eventually got a job in the personnel department at Cautaulds. It was there that she was to meet the man she went on to marry - Tom Handley, who was from near Ludlow.

"As the war drew to an end some soldiers were stationed in Coventry to help rebuild the city," she explained. "Cautaulds organised a dance for them and I met a young man called Tomas Handley. "He asked me to go out with him and I met him in town. He said he nearly didn’t come because he hadn’t got any money! We ended up going back to my home."

They started courting and on the day after her 23rd birthday, the pair tied the knot at St Lawrence’s church in Old Church Road on April 20, 1946. They lived with her parents and went on to welcome their first daughter, Pamela, on October 27, 1947.

In 1951 they moved to a house in Empire Road in Tile Hill before, in 1953, moving back to the estate her parents lived. They lived in Masser Road and by the mid 1950s, most of the family lived within five and ten minutes walk of each other.

At this time she was a nursing assistant at the old Keresley Hospital, which was where the Royal Court Hotel is now located. She went on to fall pregnant again and had another daughter, Janet who was born prematurely and had Spina Bifida.

She explained that, when older, Janet went Baginton Fields School in 1961 and she met other mothers with disabled children. It was during this time that she found out about the national association for people with Spina Bífida.

In fact, she went on to help form a Coventry group and ran meetings from the family home. They dedicated time fund-raising for the Spina Bífida association and Tom served on the committee. Janet went on to study at Tile Hill college and then Warwick University, where she qualified as teacher before later retraining as social worker.

Pam went on to study to become an archaeologist and did some part time teaching at the University of Warwick and worked on some archaeological digs including the Lunt Roman Fort in Baginton.

Sadly in the summer of 1981 Tom fell ill and in the September he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Valerie nursed him and he sadly died in December 1981. Having not got a passport until she was 58, Valerie started to venture on holidays abroad - in fact she admitted she got the travelling bug.

She went on to visit Spain, Italy, Tunisia Greece and Egypt with her two daughters. Tragically, after suffering some health problems, her daughter Pam passed away in 1993 aged 46.

Mrs Hanley went on to visit even more places around the globe including Florida, Kenya, Canada and Sri Lanka. The she and her daughter Janet started to go on cruises, including the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and all round South America including the Panamá Canal and the Amazon.

In fact, she celebrated her 80th birthday in the Bahamas. Together, she and her daughter lived in a bungalow in Charter Avenue until they moved to Earlsdon Park Village in 2017 together.

They lived there together until she moved to Eric Williams House. It is from there that, today, on her 101st birthday, that they are hosting a special party in her honour to mark the milestone.

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